MONDAY NIGHT RAW 2/13/17 – Good, Bad & Ugly Recap

Charlotte Flair and Bayley are the main event in a Women’s title match that could see their feud come to a definite end and the bestest friends in pro wrestling, Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho, will be celebrating their bromance in front of the world. On top of that we are all waiting to see Michael Cole will be unlucky in Sin City during his one-on-one interview with the always surly Samoa Joe.

THE GOOD

It’s Ladies Night

I have been pretty critical of most Charlotte/Bayley matches just because the two ladies seem to not have much chemistry in the ring but their main event match for Charlotte’s world title was a darn good match.It also delivered the payoff that wrestling booking 101 says you are supposed to get at the end of a long feud where a face is chasing a heel’s title. Sure, the interference from Dana Brooke came out of left field since I don’t remember the last time she was involved with Charlotte’s storyline as her lackey but Sasha Banks interfering was smart because it leads into a Banks/Flair feud that doesn’t really need the world title to make it matter while Bayley gets to move on to a feud against Nia Jax that plays to Bayley’s strengths as the underdog champion against the monster heel. All around a good ending for this feud and for Raw as a show.

A Spoonful of Sugar

That is what Jack Gallagher is for the Cruiserweight divisions…he the spoonful of sugar that makes people momentarily care about this poorly booked division. And I am not just saying that because of the “Mary Poppins Suicide Dive” that Gallagher does and should do in every match. The guy just has something that no on else in the Cruiserweights seems to have. Gallagher connects with the fans and makes them care about his matches. Sure his being in the ring with Noam “The Cure For Insomnia” Dar resulted in a few really quite and slow moments but Jack eventually got the fans back and one headbutt made a Cruiserweight match matter. I really hope the writers take their time with his feud against Neville because given some long-term planning it could be just the thing to save the sinking Cruiserweight ship.

Akira Tozawa is the other spoonful of sugar that helps the Cruiserweights go down on Raw. He figured out that his being one of the best wrestlers in the division (heck on Raw) wasn’t enough and that he needed to hook the fans. So he started using the grunt to do it and it works. Every primal grunt Tozawa does gets a response from the crowd and that is the quickest way to get over in WWE.

Braun is a Beast

While I hate it had to be Mark Henry, I am liking the build for Braun and having him going through some of the better big men of the past like Henry and possibly Big Show next week only serves to make Braun a more compelling monster character. And having the restraint to keep allowing Braun to come out on top of Roman Reigns not only shocks me but increases my faith in WWE creative that they are not going to screw this up.

Joe Should Have Killed Him

Doing a Samoa Joe one-on-one interview with Michael Cole that doesn’t end with Joe choking out Cole is such a missed opportunity. But on the bright side it did allow Joe to get across his character of a col-blooded, heartless assassin who intends on cutting a path of destruction through the top names on Raw. But I really would have liked to see Cole get beat up.

THE BAD

Worst Opening Segment…Ever

Having Stephanie McMahon come out to start the show would have been bad enough but added to the overall awfulness of Stephanie was Roman Reigns which gave Stephanie yet another opportunity to put herself over one of the actual stars of the show. Someone, somewhere is going to have to realize that Stephanie brings nothing to this product and lock her in an office at Titan Tower so her reign of anti-entertainment can finally be stopped. Hell, Stephanie should be banned from TV for life just for that cringe-inducing impression of Teddy Long that she did.

Then just to twist the knife on unsuspecting fans everywhere someone had the bright idea to randomly insert Gallows & Anderson into this segment for no discernible reason other than to have Roman beat up the reigning tag team champs all by his lonesome and give the fans who already think Roman is over-hyped and over-pushed even more reasons to hate him.

WWE Creative Is Sorely Overpaid

So The New Day continue their reign as the 2016 Cornball Brothers of The Year and from the looks of things they are going to be locks for repeating their win in 2017. Creative has had nothing at all for these guys to do other than prance around like goobers and hawk crappy cereal, unicorn horns and I guess a future ice cream line. But as bad as things are with The New Day they are in a much better place than poor Bo Dallas. It is sometimes hard to remember back when Bo Dallas wasn’t a complete joke but once upon a time he was NXT champ and considered to have a bright future when he was called up. But one bad storyline and gimmick after another has relegated Bo to clownshoe status where he gets pinned by Kofi Kingston and force fed Booty-O’s by the rest of The New Day. I suggest that he be moved over to Smackdown, change his name to “Beau Wyatt” and have him be Bray’s scrappy little brother.

Like Al Capone’s Vault

I remember when Geraldo Rivera had a primetime special where he was going to open Al Capone’s secret vault. The anticipation was that there would be all sorts of awesome stuff in that vault…cash, jewels, a couple dead bodies! But in the end it was just a big empty vault, Geraldo ended up looking like an idiot and viewers felt cheated.

So when, after 17 weeks of this Emmalina stuff fans were treated to Emmalina in a strip mall prom dress, struggling through 2 sentences and the promise of a new make-over to take Emmaline back to Emma, well to say it was underwhelming would be an understatement. I am sure the Raw writers think they did something so clever but all they did was guarantee that no one will ever give a damn about Emma/Emmalina regardless of what they try to do to make her interesting.

Enzo Amore Is A Scrub

I fully understand that the cheesy nonsense that Enzo Amore traffics in is pleasing to a certain segment of WWE fans who enjoy repeating stuff like brain addled Pavlov’s dogs but the guy sucks by every metric one judges wrestlers. And he continued to show how much he sucked by having botch after botch in what was basically a 2 minute squash match against Cesaro. WWE really needs to just make Enzo a full-time manager and put all their promotion behind Big Cass.

This Is What is Called Filler

Sami Zayn and Rusev had a match. It wasn’t a bad match but it also meant nothing since both of these guys seem destined to just float around the midcard on Raw serving as time fillers to pad out this overly long show and be the answer to “Who’s Next?” when it comes to new wrestlers on the roster as the beatdown Sami took from Samoa Joe proved.

UGLY

That’s What Friends Are For

Sure the Festival of Friendship had fine art, magic, the glorious return of Gillberg and the even more glorious beat down of Gillberg but none of that matters when the epic friendship of Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens has tragically ended. And this all happened a year too soon. Owens should have dropped the belt to Goldberg at the next PPV, Jericho would lose the US title on Raw the next night and then Y2J and KO would win the tag titles and have a stellar run with the belts before Owens would turn on Chris.

That would have been perfect…what actually happened was just so premature.